Travel Guide Turkwell Gorges

Turkwel is above all a living community, Ken Gen (the equivalent of our EDF), more commonly called The French Campground, where some 200 people are gathered to work on a huge dam built by the Kenyan government from 1986 to 1991, with the help of France. It should be possible to spend the night at Ken Gen, where a guesthouse regularly welcomes students who come to discover the site. However, there is no phone number or any way to book in advance. Be sure to indicate whether you want to have dinner or breakfast in the common dining room. The atmosphere in this totally isolated place is strange to say the least. A video store, an open bar, a big TV (soccer and more soccer), two billiards: these are essentially the activities that are proposed to a community mainly composed of men (some of them live here with their families), who have definitively chosen to live in the middle of a frankly inhospitable territory. The hydroelectric dam of Turkwell Gorge is located 30 kilometers away, on the Turkwel River. This river rises on Mount Elgon, on the border of Kenya and Uganda, crosses the desert plains of Loturerei and flows into Lake Turkana. "Turkwel" comes from the Turkana name, "Tir-kol", which means a river that "stands up to the wilderness"